The Dispatch Podcast - Deporting People We Don’t Like | Roundtable

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

On today’s episode of The Dispatch Podcast, Sarah Isgur, Michael Warren, Steve Hayes, and David French discuss the battle for the First Amendment. Should Columbia University student protester Mahmoud Khalil be deported over speech? The Agenda: —Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest raises 1A concerns —Shout F.I.R.E and deport Charlie Cooke —How much economic pain will Trump tolerate? —Steve Hayes hardest hit from Spanish wine tariffs —De Gaulle was right —NWYT: secret videotaping and crying children Show Notes: —Trump's Polk painting —Jonah Goldberg: Free Speech Rites —Nick Catoggio: Lesser Evils The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and regular livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isker. That's Steve Hayes. Oh, David French and Mike Warren, what a treat. We're going to start off with the funnest. topic. Deporting people we don't like. Over the weekend, Columbia graduate student Mahmood Khalil was arrested by federal immigration officials and faced with deportation for his ties to the anti-Israel demonstrations and encampments last spring on Columbia's campus.

White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt stated, quote, this administration is not going to tolerate individuals having the privilege of studying in our country and inciting with pro-terrorist organizations that have killed Americans. Khalil's arrest has faced major backlash, as you might imagine, with many arguing that his detention and the potential revocation of his green card and permanent visa status in the United States violates the First Amendment. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said, quote, the government hasn't stated the legal basis for its actions, and it has put out statements suggesting Mr. Khalil is

being targeted because of his constitutionally protected speech. This is America. The administration must not use immigration enforcement to punish and filter out ideas disfavored by the government or deny due process to anyone facing arrest and detention. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded to the allegations of anti-free speech actions with this. You tell us, hi, I'm trying to get into the United States on a student visa. I am a big supporter of Hamas, a murderous barbaric group. And if you tell us when you apply for your visa, and by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student anti-Semitic activities.

I intend to shut down your universities. If you told us all these things when you applied for a visa, we would deny your visa. I hope we would. If you actually end up doing that, once you're in this country on such a visa, we will revoke it. David and I covered the legal aspect of the Khalil case

on advisory opinions this week, but we wanted to keep talking about it. David, first of all, just kudos to fire, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. You used to be the head of fire, or so I want to be clear I'm not giving kudos to you because you didn't do anything.

No, all I hear from that, Sarah, is you trained them well. That's all I'm hearing for this. Fire in the last four months or so has taken really consistent pro-speech positions, even in places where I think you and I are like, well, maybe it's a closer call. But in this case where they are taking the side of someone who looks a whole lot like the Nazis marching through

Skokie, as in speech that we all hate, I'm really glad someone is going to say, like, hey, let's make sure this is on the up and up. What's your read on this situation, David? Yeah, you know, in a way, this is kind of for fire anyway. This is like what's old as new again, because one of the very first truly important cases that fire took on that put it on the map was the case of Sami al-Aryan, who was a, for lack of a better term, just overtly pro-jihadist professor. So one of the first things that Fire did was defend his free speech immediately after 9-11 in just the most favorable atmosphere available for defending that kind of speech. But when Fire did that, it staked out some very clear ground that I think is important to continue to stake out today.

And that is, look, I don't think anybody, anybody on this podcast is going to defend pretty much anything that Mahmoud Khalil has had to say since October 7th, I'm certainly not going to be defending it, and I'm not taking this position because anything about him is morally defensible, and in my view of his take on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But the First Amendment protects the right, incorporated through the 14th Amendment, for example, to the states of persons. This is a long-standing doctrine in the United States that if people in the United States, not just citizens, enjoy First Amendment rights,

it's also the case for a very long time that we don't inhibit or restrict free speech on the basis of very vague laws that give a lot of discretion to government officials. Here is the notice given to him. Okay, this is the notice given to him by the federal government, you know, when they came at 8.30 p.m. last Saturday night and took him. The Secretary of State has determined that your presence or activities in the

United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. Really? Really? Okay. If that is the standard that is going to allow for deportation, you're an activist student leader in a campus protest, and that can cause serious adverse policy national, you know, foreign policy consequences for the U.S., it's essentially standardless. It's essentially standardless at this point. I know you're going to tell me that there are statutes that grant the federal government broad rights of deportation. That language is taken from a statute. It grants broad rights of deportation. My argument is the very breadth of this, when combined with the fact that persons in the U.S.

receive constitutional protection, makes this, I think, I'm much more convinced that I was when we're recording A.O. That this won't stand. Now, I can imagine a circumstance in which a deportation of a green card holder could stand. So I'm not, I don't think you would have the Supreme Court say, I'm going to just strike down this statute and other statutes in total. But I could easily imagine saying, whatever it means, as applied to this, as applied to this, this is absurd. David, can I just jump in with a quick clarifying question?

What would it look like if they were to succeed in making the argument for deported? It would look a lot more like material support for terrorism. Rather than mere speech. Rather than mere speech, you'd be looking at material support as opposed to down with the Israeli occupation, opposing a two-state solution, et cetera, things like this. But you would really need to be getting into, I think, the actual material support element as opposed to I'm just speaking and saying gross things. I just wanted to clarify a few points here.

One, he had originally come to the United States on a student visa. When you hear Marco Rubio talking about this, he says, you came here on a student visa. We could have rejected your student visa based on what you were saying. So if we can reject it based on what you're saying in your home country, we can make you leave now, even if your visa status has changed since you've been here coming on a student visa. He's now a green card holder, as we said. he's married, I believe, to an American citizen, but that has not converted him into a citizen, obviously. Two, you know, there's a discussion over what exactly the First Amendment protects here, right?

The argument is he wasn't arrested for his speech. That would be a First Amendment violation, that this is only in the immigration context where there is this broader authority. Three, what the statute says, you can have your visa status revoked for, quote, endorsing terrorism. Now, there's a way to read that that is pure speech, David. And I guess the only thing I'm like underlining here that others have pointed out is

perhaps the government's fault, A, very weird for them to pick this as their test case. It would have been so much better if they'd picked someone on a student visa. They even clearly thought he was on a student visa when they arrested him. That's the deal. They didn't do their homework.

Two, we don't actually have the full facts of what they're claiming he's done. So if the statute says endorsing terrorism, and you're saying, David, like, maybe there's a spectrum between pure speech endorsing terrorism and something closer to material support for terrorism, like, for instance, throwing a fundraiser where the money was going to go back to Hamas or something

on Columbia's campus, we actually just don't have the facts of this. So I think for the purpose of our conversation, let's assume that it's pure speech, right? there's on that spectrum it's in quote endorsing terrorism and i don't even know that we even have necessarily that yet like if you just say israel's occupying gaza and their bad people and their colonizers that's not endorsing terrorism i think you actually have to have pro hummus speech which people are saying he did but i haven't actually seen the like quotes that i

could tell you on this podcast so i just wanted to make clear sort of what we know what we don't know Here's the other twist that is weird. So we're talking about the endorsing and espousing terrorism language was what we mainly focused on in AO. That doesn't appear to be the statute that the administration is using. They appear to be using an entirely different statute. They appear to be using AUSC Section 1227 that says an alien whose presence or activities in the United States, the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. States is deportable because that's what they put on the actual form the actual notice to appear

is that statute and then they gave comment to the free press and in that comment to the free press this is where it gets wait side I know I noticed the same thing so David says dispatch for us and free press this is very weird instead of green day I'm just sitting here I'm just sitting here speaking English. That's all I'm doing. So the free press says, and then I'll shut up about this, he is a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States, was that what they said to the free press. And here's the interesting quote, the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law. And so that's where it gets closer and closer and closer based on what we know to this was just about his advocacy and speech.

They've said it was not that he was breaking the law. David and I will continue to have this legal discussion on a different podcast. But, Mike, I'm coming to you because everyone wants to deport this guy. Like most people would like to deport this guy. They don't want him on Columbia's campus, shutting down the campus, preventing Jews from getting to class. Columbia is facing multiple Title VI lawsuits, claiming that they have created a severe and pervasively discriminatory environment for Jews because of their religion and ethnicity. And yet, should we, as conservatives and as Western liberals,

should we be standing a thwart saying, don't do this? This is bad policy. Forget the law. Well, I think the policy is, yes, it wouldn't be bad policy. I think the politics is where it gets much more complicated. Because, as David said, nobody on this podcast will defend this guy and what he's saying. I think there are very few people in America who look at, the facts or unfortunately the sort of surface level facts of this and think, oh yeah, this is a guy we really

won on our college campuses and here in America. Why did we let this guy in the country in the first place? The principle that you and David have been talking about, Sarah, is not always and frequently rarely popular. And I think that is what is unfortunate about all of this is the slapdash way that the administration approached this, I agree with you. They clearly did not do their homework. Everything that has happened since they knocked on his door and arrested the guy has been a sort of post-fact. I'm not using the legal terms correctly, but everything's been pretextual. Post-talk. They've tried to figure out exactly how they can get this guy once they've got him. They're probably in a good political position to do that. And they're

helped, by the way, you know, people like the whoever's running the social media account for the Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee who posted a picture of this creep with free Mahmoud Khalil like he's some sort of folk hero. Just because it's wrong to deport this guy on the basis of the facts that we know now doesn't mean he's a hero. And Democrats don't seem to understand this. Trump is so good about picking, like putting his enemies. Like, It's the equivalent of cancer boy at the not state of the union and getting the Democrats to stay seated instead of applauding for the little boy with cancer. It's genius.

Getting them to take Mahmoud Khalil as their hero, genius politically. But to be fair, is only 14 of their representatives out of almost 200. I think it's an important point to note that there are actual grownups in the Democratic Party. I know that can be hard to believe sometimes, but they exist. Again, that's why I said the people who are running the social media account, which I gather are likely to be younger, likely to be less experienced, less likely to have the broader interest of the Democratic Party in mind when they do these things. But the job of fire, the job of us, those of us who are reporting and commentating on what's happening, is different than the job of, say, the Democratic and Republican parties. The mess we are in discussing this topic, it's entirely political. I don't know what more there is to say, we have to say what the truth is,

but I also have to acknowledge that this is something that Republicans and Trump, like they're in the driver's seat on this politically because it's going to be popular and it's not going to be popular to say the truth. Steve, let's take it out of the context of Israel, Jews, October 7th, Colombia. I want to put it in the Skokie Nazi context. And remember, this was the Nazi party in Illinois. all like 10 of them or whatever it was, wanting intentionally to march through a neighborhood

of Holocaust survivors to tout Nazism. And we said as a country, though it was very unpopular with most countrymen, yes, that is protected speech. But it's not like the Nazis over in Germany, not that there were a lot at that point, but it's not like the Nazis over in Germany said, we want to come march in a Holocaust survivor neighborhood in Illinois,

can we get a visa to come have that protest and march over there? And we were like, ooh, we're really going to struggle with that one. No, we would have said no to German Nazis coming to Skokie, Illinois. If Germans had come in on a tourist visa, just because they wanted to look around. But it turns out they wanted to march through Skokie, Illinois, to harass Holocaust survivors. We would have said, go the F home. It is different in the immigration context. You don't have a right to come to the United States,

which was the point that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was making. Why shouldn't I be a little convinced that I can be a First Amendment absolutist and still not think that a non-citizen has the right to harass American citizens for gross stuff that we wouldn't have let them in the country to do? Yeah, so that's one of many questions I have for you legal nerds. I mean, as David, I think, explained at the beginning, the right attaches to the person, correct? And the rationalizations we're seeing from the Trump administration would be relevant had they made this determination before he came, right? And now they're, as Mike suggests, making all of these arguments post hoc.

So they're attempting to undo something that they already did. Am I right in understanding it that way? I think this goes to like student visa point. I mean, David, let me ask it this way. If he had been here on a student visa, would you feel exactly the same way you feel? Or would it change a little? It would change a little in the strength of his own First Amendment assertion. It would not change my evaluation of the underlying statute, which is ludicrously broad. And this idea that you can protect the foreign policy of the U.S. by suppressing speech, I mean, I hear that, and I think does that

mean that the Obama administration in 2015 could have deported my friend Charlie Cook, who was a green card holder at the time, British citizen, and excoriating Obama foreign policy to millions of people. Look, I think that's actually a really, really good example, maybe better than my Skokie example. Okay, so Charlie Cook from National Review is a infamous Brit. Infamous. Comes to this country, drinks our water, breathes our air. Is it on a permanent visa status, green card holder? He's sent. become a citizen. I can't imagine how we let that happen. But you're right. He's sitting there criticizing not just the administration, but the foreign policy, right? So in theory, he is giving

verbal aid and comfort and arguments to our enemies. If the Obama administration had revoked his visa status and deported him, how would we feel? I mean, obviously we wouldn't feel good because we like Charlie. But legally, would I still think that this is different in the immigration context. I think I, I think I might. Seriously, just sitting there saying Obama's foreign policy is counterproductive. It's going to result in a weaker America and an unjust America. And bunches of Republican members of Congress listen in Charlie, as they do. I know. This is, look, this is the difference between the legal problem and the policy problem, because legally, I think you might. Policy-wise, it seems like a really bad idea to have people living in the

United States who are terrified of criticizing the United States. And Steve, this gets to my next question about this for you. Set aside the law now and even the politics, as Mike said, from a policy standpoint, will this actually be effective? Will it deter pro-Hamas anti-Israel sympathies on campus? Are young people suddenly going to be like, oh, never mind, we love Israel? No, I don't think so. Steve, we want to know where you stand on deporting Charlie Cook in 2015. I'm anti- I'm deported and Charlie Cook. I like it. I find those arguments compelling.

Right, these people, like the point of the marketplace of ideas is that then it allows everyone to judge the people with really bad ideas. And on the one hand, the pro-Hamas folks have beclowned themselves. They have become one of the most unpopular movements so quickly. It's amazing. And it's because we allowed them to show who they are. Tell us what your arguments are. And the majority of Americans found their arguments stupid and disgusting.

That being said, when you break it down by generation, a lot of young people were more convinced, and so this is always the problem with the First Amendment. There's a little bit of danger in the First Amendment. Although I don't think they were necessarily convinced by the protests on the campus, actually. I think they were convinced more broadly by things like the arguments they heard on TikTok.

But am I right that the language of the statute is, quote, compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest is that is that the language and if it is wouldn't the distinction that people favor these policies draw between the charlie cook example and what we're seeing with calil is in the nature of the language and the the idea that he might actually be compromising a legitimate united states foreign policy interest you know you can you can go and look at the reporting around why haman was making the decisions it was making in the context of hostage releases and standing firm. It is very clear that they were tracking directly the activities of the protesters on U.S. college campuses

and made the determination that as long as they had that kind of support in the United States, they didn't need to look for compromises. Wouldn't you say if we have American hostages being held by Hamas and Hamas is making these determinations based on what they see as support, at least in a limited way, at least on college campuses, that that is a legitimate U.S. foreign policy interest? David, you're the pro-Hamas guy on the podcast. Oh, please. You know, I would need evidence tying Mahmoud Khalil

to the consequence. Not just that he's a member of a big blob of people who have exercised their rights to varying degrees and sometimes violated the rights of others, for example, the encampments violated the rights of others. But again, the administration is not saying there's any illegality involved here. Which is weird. But yeah, so we have to take them at their word.

I think it's odd that they're not trying to find what looked to me like you could probably get some illegal activity there, but okay. But what is, David, to that point, what is the worst thing he himself has said? I mean, it's been interesting that the people who have condemned him. And I am ready. I buy the arguments. I am fully loaded to accept the arguments that he's as bad as people say. But mostly the evidence given in support of those claims is that the group that he belongs to or helps lead has sort of set all of these things that might cross the line from espousing pro-terrorist views to enticing some kind of action. Is that the case, or have I just not looked hard enough?

Well, so there is a dossier against him by a group called the Canary Mission. So this is a group of people. I don't know much about them, but they do, they have profiled a lot of students involved in the student protests. So they have a dossier. And when you read the dossier, it is not the kind of rhetoric that we saw from lots of other people, right? So you had, it says on his. been a leading anti-Israel protest at Columbia since October 12, 2023. That day, he led a rally where activists chanted from the river to the sea. Okay, so that's one thing. He was a leader in various

student groups in Colombia as students for justice in Palestine. He said, we've tried armed resistance, which is legitimate under international law, but Israel calls it terrorism. That was something that he said. And then you go on, and a lot of it is what the members of the group have said. So the group co-sponsored this. The group co-sponsored that. So there's some evidence that he might have had some participation in a social media site where other people posted things that were worse. But you're not looking at a kind of dossier here that is this person has specifically celebrated Hamas, this person has engaged in activity that would come anywhere close to what that standard I was talking about, material support for terrorism. Nothing like that.

His main offense seems to be that he was a student leader of student groups. And we could put the, you know, the dossier against him in the show notes so that people could read it for themselves. My observation on this is there seems to be a through line in the Trump II administration, which is nobody's doing their homework, whether it's Doge, whether it's this particular enforcement of immigration, maybe, maybe not. Everybody acts first. Ready, fire, aim.

Exactly. Act first, and then find your justification, then find your argument, find some nugget of truth within what you're trying to do, and then blow that up, find the justification after the fact. It's no way to run an administration or account. country. It actually hurts your case when it's strong. I think what Doge is doing is hurting the

case for limited government. I think this is probably hurting the case and hurting the idea. I mean, as we've said, the pro-Hamas protesters were telling on themselves this whole time. They were doing the job that I think the Trump administration feels like they're trying to do here. I think that's the through line in this. It's really sort of in a long-term damaging to whatever goals conservatives think they might be getting out of a Trump administration. And this is a great example of that. I mean, my views usually line up sort of almost down the line with what I hear from our friends at fire. And they do in this case as well. But I think even if one were inclined to be more sympathetic to the argument that the administration is making.

If you bought the argument, hey, this is, you know, in effect, support for Hamas, and this does compromise a legitimate U.S. national security interest or whatever the language is. If you look at this in the context of what else the administration is doing on speech and on shutting up the people, it doesn't agree with, it doesn't like, you have to be alarmed by this because in that sense, it's of a peace with all of these. other things that they are doing to try to shut up opposition, even as they count themselves as the free speech, the free speech administration. And I think in that sense, if you're, you know, if you find this a difficult issue, and I do find this a difficult issue, I think the tiebreaker

has to be sort of what are the trends here that we're seeing from the administration and what does this, you know, what are the precedents that are set? What does this lead to down the line? And just a note to Charlie Cook, if you're listening, there is such a thing as denaturalization. Charlie, I got your back, brother. I got your back. Even though your country did burn down our capital, and I don't think Syria or Algeria, where McMood is from, has done either thing. His former country, David, his former country. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online.

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This raises the question, how much economic pain is Trump willing to tolerate? Mike, is this ideological? Is it because he thinks it's going to be popular? Is it because he what he promised to do? Is it because it's fun? I mean, this feels more like a ready fire aim thing than anything else because it's like we're going to have tariffs tomorrow. Nope, I'm going to delay them. Oh, we're doing tariffs again. Nope, we're not doing tariffs. Then the economy tanks. So how, how am I supposed

to think of what Donald Trump is doing here? What is this? The tariffs will continue until morale improves. So just, don't you understand this is the rebuilding of the economy? I believe that Donald Trump likes tariffs. And the reason I believe that is because he said, I like tariffs. I love tariffs. They're great. I don't think he has any, you know, bigger, broader, more like, you know, he's not looking farther down the line. He thinks that they are great. He thinks autarky is the way to run the country and to run the economy. As someone said, I want my 16th century mercantile economic ideas back. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that sounds great. Maybe there's some bullion we can find somewhere that hasn't been discovered yet. Maybe it's in Greenland. Oh, he's figured it out. It's underneath the ice in Greenland. I think that is the thing.

It's the method and it's the end. And everybody else in the administration, everybody else defending the administration on this is simply trying to fit it into whatever policy they have to defend. If you look at Howard Lutnik, for instance, he's going on TV all week this week and saying the most ridiculous, incoherent things for a guy, who's, you know, was the CEO of a major financial services company saying things that I can't

believe he believes. I can't believe he would even look back at the tape and be like he would look back at it and say, that's incoherent. That makes no sense. But he's got to fit it in to please a boss who likes tariffs. That's all it is. I think there is a there is a pinch point, though at which Donald Trump will not like week after week after week of market volatility volatility that's going in one direction down and that cuts against his love of tariffs because he also loves to win. I don't know when that moment is, however, and he's got nobody in there who is telling him, as far as I know, who is telling him, Mr. President, I think it's not working anymore. So it may take a few more weeks of pain. Okay, Steve, there's two issues here.

One, I think, and again, I agree that this is like sort of post hoc rationalization, right? The argument is we have to fundamentally change the foundations of America's economy. And yes, there's going to be some pain along the way to doing that. But in the end, it will be a healthier, more sustainable economy. And so, yep, here's the painful part. Two, how much are Republicans Republicans in Congress and writ large, going to be willing to stand by for that pain. And is this potentially going to really undermine the hold that Trump has had on the Republican Party if you have to have a bunch of Republican senators out there apologizing and apologizing to the point that finally they're like, never mind, this guy has no clue.

He tanked our economy. Like what's the pain threshold? I mean, probably not, right? Probably. I don't expect Republican senators are going to say that or Republican members of the House. I mean, you have this position. I think Mike framed it properly. Very few people believe in this as a policy matter. This is sort of Donald Trump, the victim, claiming that he wants to level the playing fields, that he needs to punish Canada, that he's been treated unfairly. And Donald Trump

always thinks he's been treated unfairly by everybody at all times. That's what makes a trade war like this so dangerous because we're never going to reach the point where Donald Trump looks up and says, everything's fair now. He's going to constantly look for the next thing. where he's being treated unfairly. We saw this morning we're recording Thursday morning. He threatened, I think it was 200% tariffs on European wine and products from Europe if they tax, if they tariff American whiskey.

I mean, it's just... Steve Hayes hit hardest as Spanish wine is tariffed. I opposed the policies before, but I'm ready to take to the streets right now. He's never going to get to the point where he says, okay, now, we've reached the level playing field, we've succeeded. And I think that's what makes this dangerous is like every little tweak or every little

sort of tit for tat move by trade partners, our allies who are frustrated with this, is likely to make Donald Trump angrier and angrier. And I think by and large, we've seen that nobody's willing to stand up to him on this. I mean, you know, having had, again, conversations with Republican senators who are staunchly opposed to this, think that these policies are disastrous. they are not now speaking up. John Thune, the Republican leader in the Senate the other day, whose agriculture sector in South Dakota is in real trouble

if these policies continue the way that they've been set out at the outset, you know, said, look, I look at this a different way and we're going to sort of let the president's policies play out and we'll see where they end up. And I saw one comment sort of responding to that saying, what else are they to do? This is what Trump wants to do. They've ceded their authority to him. My argument is pretty simple. Oppose the president. Make the freaking argument. Tell people why it's bad. It's not like there's much ambiguity on the history here. There's consensus among economists

that you see on virtually no other issue. Tariffs are bad. The other thing that's the giveaway, and I think you alluded to this, Sarah, in your setup, is the shifting arguments from people, people trying to defend these, they're making every different kind of totally preposterous arguments. You saw Carolyn Levitt from the White House podium at a press briefing this week, arguing that tariffs are tax cuts. Tariffs are not tax cuts. There's no way to understand tariffs as tax cuts. Peter Navarro made the same argument. I mean, that's economically incoherent. It's illiterate beyond all imagination. You've had other people. I mean, Lutnik has been making sort of his silly and bizarre arguments about what they are.

You've had Kevin Hassett go on national television on Sunday and make the argument that what we're witnessing is not a trade war. This isn't a trade war. This is a drug war. Really? I mean, look at everything that the president of the United States has been doing. Of course it's a trade war, but they don't want to call it a trade war because trade wars are not, in fact, fun and easy to win, as the president has said.

As to final point, as to when this might change. that the question is, you know, is Joe, Jonah makes the argument that Donald Trump pays very careful attention to the stock market. And he listens to the stock market and he sees the stock market as effectively the thermometer on the U.S. economy. If that's true, you would expect that some of these policies would change soon because the stock market is rendered a verdict and it's not a good one. You've had Americans lose $1 trillion in retirement savings since the beginning of this nonsense. The other question is, to what extent, if you're Donald Trump and you live in this feedback loop where you only listen to your people inside the administration, and as we've

said, they're not raising voices of opposition. You listen to Republicans in Congress. They're not, as far as we know, raising serious voices of opposition. And then you look at what you're getting in conservative media. And we know that Donald Trump lives on and informs himself by listening and paying attention to conservative media. And there's a really interesting piece by Ken Benzinger in the New York Times today about how conservative media has basically ignored this. You don't hear about it. You don't see it.

You don't watch it. They don't talk about the economy and what's been happening. And in the rare occasions where they do talk about it, they find creative ways to praise dear leader for his visionary stewardship of the nation's economy. I mean, Will Kane on Fox News said, our economy has been addicted to government. spending, the withdrawal of that government spending can send a patient, our economy, into a health crisis. But ultimately, it has to withdraw once again to get healthy. And then Rob Schmidt at Newsmax said, this is happening because we have a president with the balls to undo a globalist

economic agenda that's decimated American wages and quality of life. This is the pain that comes from real change. If that's what Donald Trump is listening to and taking in, he could stick with this for a while because that's that you know he's he's hearing that as praise for these policies if we were going to do like we need to redo the american economy and it's going to take a little bit of pain but we'll come out much healthier on the other side why the hell aren't we doing entitlement reform yes what this is the this isn't the part that needed to be fixed absolutely can i just say by the way the the impulse to i'm going to use a big word here that i'm not entirely sure I know how to pronounce, to anthropomorphize the economy, to make it into a

person, like, there is nothing that sends me with more rage about, like, talking about economics and to say, like, it's a sick patient and it needs to be, you know, it needs to have some bloodlet it, like, get some leeches on this economy so that we can, it's like, it's so, speaking of 16th century. Well, that's, that's where my mind is now. It's like, it's absurd, because as we Oh, no, the economy is not a thing that can be – in fact, conservatives used to argue this with sort of liberals and progressives about the way they thought about the economy and macroeconomics, that it's this thing that can be sort of manipulated. It's like it's individual people and businesses making individual economic decisions. And when government or some other big entity tries to make some kind of action to manipulate things, it warps every. body's incentives and changes things.

It's really funny that we anthropomorphize the economy, but we don't anthropomorphize like actual humans. Like there's humans in the public eye that we treat as if they are soap opera characters who can't hear what we're saying and don't read the news and like exist in this alternate plane. I think we do that with Supreme Court justices, a lot in the media. We act like they don't exist in real life. But then the economy has all these feelings.

David, so our relationship with Canada feels like it's changing a little and a whole bunch of other countries hating on this. Of course they're hating on it, right? We're putting tariffs on their stuff. How permanent is this, though? Generational damage and here's why. Because what has happened is that our allies now know that America's one election away from that our allies can look at our political scene and a fair conclusion would be that the post-war foreign policy consensus that was always overblown as consensus. There was a lot of sharp differences, but here was never a difference.

Should we be on Putin's side or not? Like the foreign policy consensus was broadly organized around, for example, the Soviet Union was a threat, and we both recognized it, but we had very, very different ideas about how to deal with that threat. Or NATO is an ally,

that NATO is an indispensable institution of allies, and that it needs to be healthy, but what that looks like and what level of defense spending versus social spending, always very sharp disagreements. But what they have learned in this election is that America could elect a person who will demolish that all of that, all of that, functionally, at least for a time, switch sides in a war with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that will impose tariffs

and begin trade wars on allies for no reason. No one has ever sat down and explained the beef with Canada in any real detail. And by the way, this 51st state nonsense is getting scary. Not scary, scary, like, oh, no, we're going to war with Canada, but they're diluted scary. Like, they actually seem to be talking themselves into something along the lines of maybe adjusting the borders between the countries. There's been reports of that from the, you know, trade talks. Like, what are we even doing here? And so our allies would be foolish to say look at a midterm election that maybe brings Democrats back

into a narrow majority in the House or an election in 2028 in which maybe a J.D. Vance narrowly loses to Governor Shapiro from Pennsylvania go, oh, all has been restored. No, they have learned something that they cannot unlearn.

And this is one of the reasons why you're seeing France step forward very aggressively right now. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. I long admired Charles de Gaulle, especially for World War II. I had a lot of beef with Charles de Gaul in the 1960s when he pulled France from the NATO security arrangement and began to develop a truly independent French nuclear deterrent and truly independent French defense manufacturing industry.

I was like, team player, dude, you got to be a team player. De Gaul was right. He was absolutely right. A great nation should not be dependent on another. nation for its national security. And that's why he has the freedom to potentially defend, extend the French nuclear umbrella throughout Western Europe. And by the way, it's the third largest readily deployable nuclear arsenal in the world. Just real quick, David, did you just explain to me what you were thinking post-World War II?

Look at him. Look at it. Look at him. Makes perfect sense. That came out wrong. I mean, I've been calling you old, but even I didn't think that you were in 1940 in 1946. Yeah, that's a good call. When I was a young kid, and I learned about it. When I picked up the phone and called the gall. I will say this, it was an ancient history when I was born that France had pulled out of the defense rate, I mean, out of the part of NATO's defense infrastructure.

So I could almost remember it, Sarah. I could almost remember it. So just to pick up on the last point, or the last point before we made fun of David for his age. You know, this is one of those, this is one of those things when you talk about sort of Trump's expansionist inclinations, where I think it presents a, it's a hard thing for journalists. Like, how seriously do you take this? Because I think the Greenland stuff was met with sort of like dismissive laughs, shoulder shrugs, you know, for people like Jonah who have long been arguing this, he may have taken a little bit more seriously. But the Canada

is a 51st state. I think most people heard that as a way to put down Trudeau and poke a little fun, have a little fun. And it's the kind of thing that Trump supporters point to Trump critics as getting up in arms about when it's really just like, you can't take him literally. You know, this isn't time not to take him seriously or literally. This is just Donald Trump riffing. And, you know, when you Trump critics are always 11 out of 10, it discredits the times when you need to actually be alarmed about things.

And I think they're right about that. I think the Trump supporters are right about that. Lull, take the bait. He's trolling you. why are you even like oh my god you don't know a joke when you see it and then they realize that he's being serious but actually okay i i know steve this is going to go against what you just said but i actually think that when everyone treated it like it was a joke including trump's own supporters he digs in and it actually still is a troll but now he has to wait until everyone thinks it's real to back off of it well uh maybe i mean

I guess that's the best case scenario, right? He will go to war with Canada to prove he means it. In any direction, it's idiocy. No, but so the thing I wanted to raise is a really interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal, Thursday's Wall Street Journal, that we'll put in the show notes from Josh Dossie and some others there, the painting that explains Trump's foreign policy. And it's about a trade that he made for a Thomas Jefferson. painting with Mike Johnson, Speaker Mike Johnson, for a James Polk painting, the famously expansionist James Polk, and Trump apparently, according to their reporting, has told visitors at the White House, I like this guy, because he got a lot of territory, he got a lot of land, and so that's how I

see my role. You know, it's only funny until it's not, right? David, this is how Tennessee people take credit for Texas. It's James Polk, right? So just to be clear, we're talking about you here, sir, because I know you were alive when James Polk did this and you had some thoughts at the time. You know, early on, I supported the Mexican War. Later, as I learned more about the border incidents and everything, then I had some calms, Sarah. I had some qualms.

But I didn't protest on campus. Yeah, I was too young to protest on campus. All right, the not worth your time is going to be about what we should do on secret or even not secret recordings of people in public places who don't want to be recorded. So the story we're going to use for this back in December, a woman named Jennifer Castro found herself the target of a virtual struggle session for a viral video of her refusing to give up her window seat on an airplane to a crying child. This kid was about, I'm going to, you know, he's about three years

old. They were traveling as a family. They were seated together. In fact, another member of the family had a window seat. But the three-year-old wanted this specific window seat that our friend here, Jennifer Castro, was sitting in. And she had, of course, booked in advance and paid for her window seat, theoretically and literally. And I guess the mom is like, why won't you just give him your window seat? He's a child. What is wrong with you? Do you have a disability? A passenger who is not the mother, unclear whether it's a family member, starts videotaping the woman for the purpose of shaming her. Post this video that gets two million views and it changes her life. She was a bank, you worked at a bank before and now she doesn't and she was afraid to leave her house. So she is suing

the airline and the person who took and posted the video. And I guess I'm just wondering back to our free speech conversation a little bit. What are we supposed to do about this? Because as it turned out, you could argue that the market of ideas worked. Jennifer Castro became the hero of the story. Everyone thought that the family and the mom were actually just terrible for thinking that their three-year-old was entitled to a window seat that the child is clearly not entitled to. So it worked, right? Jennifer Castro wasn't the bad guy, but we've seen plenty of examples where if you edit the video right, if you don't put the whole story there, these people's lives get at least temporarily ruined, they become famous for something they maybe did that wasn't

great but not life-ruining bad, or that they didn't even do. We've saw a verse. of this with Justice Alito even. A person was secretly recording audio of Justice Alito, and his answers were really benign. Like, America should be a more godly country. And as long as the headline read, secret recording of Supreme Court justice, it didn't really matter what the substance was.

It was like somehow he had violated the ethics of a justice for being secretly recorded. I'm still pretty confused. and what the problem was there. And now, if you're a remotely public figure, and even if you're not, there's this sense that at any point, someone could be recording what you say. You can't sort of be yourself outside your own home. You can't say anything that could be taken in the wrong way or edited out of context. And it seems like not ideal way to live. So is it worth our time to talk about putting stricter legal limitations, cultural limitations, shaming limitations on recording people in

public now that we all have these ubiquitous video cameras in our pockets. Steve, what do you say? I don't think legal restrictions at all. But I think the, yeah, I mean, I think the behavior of the person who videoed this particular incident was gross. And there are so many other incidents. I mean, I think about the kinds of things that, the kinds of fun I liked to have in college and what would have happened to me if people had had these kinds of videos. all over the place. My fraternity used to have a party called I Buy You Wear. You picked a name out of a hat and you bought the outfit that your, you know, whoever's name you got. And some of the outfits were embarrassing. I mean, almost all of the outfits were embarrassing. But they're the kinds of things I would not want anybody to have video of today. Yeah, I mean, I think this is gross. On the plane thing in particular, I mean, the problem with all of this is you don't know what the context is, right? And sometimes, like, context doesn't matter. Somebody's being a jerk, you film them, and they're just being a jerk.

But in many cases, these videos, these short clips stripped of context, it can invert the actual significance of what happened. What was the young men, Covington Catholic High School, who were filmed on the mall in this argument, certainly if you just looked at that initial clip, it looked like these kids were being obnoxious and, you know, that was the way that it was covered. And of course, subsequent videos and more reporting found out that there was a lot of context that suggested that those original videos were not only not representative of what had happened, but in some ways the opposite of what had happened.

So, I mean, I think this is a really bad, and I think we should do office eye-by-you-wear party at some point. Okay, David, on the legal side of this, we already have consent for secret recordings, right? There's a lot. Most states are one-party consent states, as in you is a third-party. can't secretly record to other people's private conversation, but as long as your party to the conversation, you're allowed to record it. However, there's a handful of two-party consent states, meaning that I can't secretly record my conversation with the other person I am talking to. We've also seen challenges, though, to laws that say you can't record a police officer who tells you

to stop recording, for instance. Those have been struck down, broadly speaking. I don't know. Should we be finding a legal mechanism, if someone, if you're recording someone on the street having a private conversation and they say stop recording me, should that be backed up by law at some point where you can make someone stop, not make them in the real time, you can't grab their phone and hit them with it, but like if you tell them to stop and then they use that recording, you're going to get monetary damages. I would say, I'm with Steve. I say no. And one of the reasons why I say no is I think of, I don't like laws where there's an impossibility of real enforcement. that, you know, if every last person you encounter over the age of 10 is carrying a recording

device in their pocket or has one on their face, you know, the rayband, the meta raybans, for example, or whatever. I don't pass laws that are not enforceable. The real problem here is cultural, and it spins all the way back to my rant two weeks ago, Sarah, where it was like, we need to care less about other people's choices. That's the energy behind all of this. We have all of this anger and emotion about personal circumstances of people, weddings, etc, that are none of our business, none of our business. And so, you know, it's funny, I do think that there's going to be some cultural change.

And I think some of that cultural change might be maybe employed. are more resistant to taking super fast action on the basis of viral videos. I think we are seeing maybe a pause on that. The Covington Catholic situation was an ideal example for Steve to bring up about how short video can be extremely deceptive. And so I do think that we have to have a cultural change here, which is, why don't I be less judgy on social media? Like, that's just a baseline.

But, Steve, your example actually brought up a different tangent. If you go back to 2016, 2017, do you remember how much energy was taken into finding the hidden racial subtext in the Covington Catholic? Or is the OK symbol? Is that a symbol of white supremacy, right? All of this looking for subtext, we have devolved to the point now where there are no dog whistles anymore. It's just bullhorts all over social media. And it really, you know, when you bring up Covington Catholic, that was one of the things that made that so explosive

was this alleged subtext, right? It's all text now, guys. It's all text now. All right, Mike. I mean, we both have small kids. I actually make it a point on airplanes. In fact, just a couple days ago, there was a three-year-old just screaming the whole flight.

It was a late flight. take off till 10.15 p.m. And this poor kid, he screamed for an hour and the flight was an hour in 15 minutes. And he, of course, had fallen asleep at the hour mark. And then she had to wake him up. It was, I was like, oh, my God. So I like to make it a point to turn around to parents and be like, hey, just so you know, this doesn't bother me at all. That's what my AirPods are for. And like, I'm, it just reminds me how grateful I am that my three-year-old isn't screaming at me right now. So like, you're the one stressed. I know that. And you're good. Don't be stressed on my behalf also. The idea that I'm going to give you my window seat to make your kid stop crying, though, is a big, no.

I like my window seat. I picked my window seat, especially if another family member of yours has a window seat. It's a good parenting moment for you to teach your kid that you can't always get what you want. And you videotaping me, I don't know. Like, she filed this lawsuit. I probably wouldn't do that because it's probably not worth it. but I would certainly feel aggrieved that I actually would feel more aggrieved at the airline for not stepping in because they either like this is my seat and you need to help enforce that

as well or it needs to be southwest and everything's a free for all but you can't have it both ways airline because a lot of these are driven by airlines sort of stepping back and letting passengers have a lord of the flies type situation when it comes to seat assignments So what's your question to me? I don't know. Okay. Because there's a lot I got to deal with in that. First of all, this is why I don't travel with my young kids on airplanes.

I know some people have to do that. But like we just we just don't do it and it's fine. And like I don't like I don't want to deal with it as a parent. After like a certain age, like after probably about nine months, it becomes really impossible to get through a flight without some kind of crying. and fussing. So I just don't do it. But I don't blame any parent who does if that's what they have to do. I do think the late night flight is not a good time, not my recommendation when you've got

a little kid. But no, I wanted to talk more about the whole privacy element because I was doing as I often do. I was flipping through in style magazine as I do every, when it comes into my mailbox every month or quarter. I don't know when it comes. And there's an interview with Scarlett Johansson in style. And she says in this, they talk about.

this policy she has, which is she does not take photos with fans if she's not at an event, if she's out in the world walking around doing her normal life. And she said, this is a quote from it. It really offends a lot of people. It doesn't mean I'm not appreciative, of course, that people are fans or happy to see me. But I always say to people, I'm not working. And that means I don't want to be identified as being in this time and place with you. I'm doing my own thing. Now, that may be sort of unrealistic. She's, you know, a super famous Hollywood actress. Like, she probably, like, can't get away with not being recognized. But I think... And I'm a super famous legal podcast. Yeah, you can't as well. No, no, no, no, no photos,

please, Sarah is going around. Please, please. I think there's something in the, and celebrities have been trying to tell us this for a while, that the amount of attention that they get is, like, psychologically damaging. Celebrity culture is not good for those celebrities. And I fear what has happened culturally is like any one of us could be a celebrity in any given moment in our worst moments or on the flip side. I mean, some of these viral videos are people doing great. You know, that's the famous milkshake duck meme on Twitter was a way to sort of show like, oh, everybody is looking at this viral video of a duck drinking a milkshake. And then, oh, whoops, you find out the The duck is racist.

You know, anything that, any attention that you can get, positive or negative, could, you know, could rebound on you. And I think it's not good psychologically for so many people to know about us, right? Like, we need our small community and our slightly bigger community. And I just think there's a lesson here that celebrities have been trying to tell us for decades, which is too much attention, too many cameras in the phases, the TMZ effect. it's bad for everybody. And I just think, turn off your cameras.

If there's a crime happening, that's one thing. But what this woman was doing was not a crime. She was sitting in her seat and minding our business. All right, with that, thank you for listening to the Dispatch podcast. And next week, next week, we'll be discussing the armed occupation of Toronto, Canada. No, Edmonton, they will greet us as liberators. Bye. I read one study about that, and I haven't read anything else since.

That's the right one. Yeah, yeah, that's like reading the study that says bourbon is good for you. And so I'm done. It's stopping. Yeah. No further inquiry necessary. All right. All right.

Let's do this. What was that? May I have your attention? May I have your attention, please? We'll be conducting the test of. built the fire alarm system, please disregard any signals you may hear or see. Once again, we'll be tested on the fire alarm system. Please disregard. Exactly 9.20 a.m.

Only a test. Thank you. That's amazing. That is amazing.